Manga Review: Someday's Dreamers (volume 1)

I feel bad for forgetting to review this one but that probably because it was a simpler, feel good slice of life story you could pick up anytime instead of something plot heavy where you really need to remember it if you want to keep following it. Still, considering I'd wanted to try either the manga or anime for a while now I really don't know how I forgot to write this up, guess I've been even busier than I thought.

Someday's Dreamers by Norie Yamada and Kumichi Yoshizuki (artist)

Summary: In a world slightly different from ours, Yume is a young magic user training in Tokyo to get her license. She prefers to follow her heart, not necessarily logic or reason, and would rather do the right thing and make people happy than follow the rules or make tons of money.

The Good: It's a quiet, soft series without being dumb. I suppose that Yume is moe but she doesn't feel like a dumb character, rather a young one and since the reader doesn't know the rules of the world around her either she's easy to sympathize with. With a very sedate pace it's easy to read just a chapter or two at a time without any pressure to follow it up immediately, a nice thing when life is a bit hectic.

The Bad: Well, I did manage to forget about it and, even as busy as I am that's a bit unusual. And a lack of central plot would probably start to annoy me after a few volumes, this is probably the series I can only get through in small chunks every now and then. And unless Yume gets more of a personality beyond the fact that she is the navie newcomer then she's going to get on my nerves fast.

The Art: Nothing special here, it's soft like the story but the artist doesn't bother to create their own style to use here and I would be hard pressed to recognize any other work they did. So it is decent art, just nothing really special and considering manga is both words and pictures that's rather important.


More than anything else this reminded me that I still haven't gotten to watching Aria yet (yes I have an aria icon but I haven't seen the series, have read some of the manga however) and, even though that's a series I really do want to try, I'm more than a little worried now that I'll find that too quite and slow as well. Who knows, maybe I'll find there's more variation than I would've thought in these ultra slow with a bit of moe slice of life stories.